A Written Record of Personal Self-Improvement

A Little Ambiance

Like a lot of IT folks, my working environment is a cubicle. There’s a mixed group around me, all IT types, and there’s quite a bit of foot traffic down the “hallway” beside my cube. This is mainly because of a concentration of management offices near where I sit. With as much traffic as goes by, it can be rather distracting. Add to the fact that I don’t have a door or any other way to break up sight lines into and out of the cube and sometimes it can be a fight to focus. If you’re a cube-dweller, you’re probably thinking, “What else is new?”

One of the easy ways to counter distraction is to put on a set of headphones/wear ear buds or the like. The question then becomes one of what should I listen to? I tried audiobooks, but generally, I tune those out as I focus on specific tasks, meaning I’m not getting any usefulness out of them during that time. Driving to and from work or sitting somewhere when I have to wait? Then they are useful. Not while I’m working, though. Music is okay, but music can be distracting, too. So I sat down and thought about when I was most productive. What was the environment like?

One of the things I realized is that when I’m exposed to natural sounds, I tend to focus better. I saw a review for a small iPhone app called Ambiance and went and grabbed it from the App Store. I am not actively hunting for apps to use, so I didn’t realize how popular it was. If you’re like me, then you don’t either. It is very popular, as in top ten of paid apps. It’s inexpensive. On the website right now they are showing the iPhone version is $2.99, which is what I believe I paid. If you have an Android phone, there’s a version of it for those phones, too.

The nice thing about Ambiance is that there are a good number of excellent quality recordings. They are categorized in everything from ground water to different categories of urban sounds to rural ones. There are even some military sounds. A lot of these are free downloads once you pay the initial cost of the app. The ones I tend to use the most are:

Soft Marsh

Autumn Woods

Deister Forest

That’s the order of preference, especially when I have a lot to do. They allow me to tune out most of the distractions around me and just focus on the work at hand. Also, when I don’t have any particularly pressing tasks but I can’t get outside, I’ll use these three “sounds” to just tune out and think. Taking time to think about goals, about interactions, about previous events, about relationships, and a whole host of other things is helpful and makes me more productive. In a house with teenage boys, there isn’t a lot of quiet. So I use Ambiance there, too. That $2.99 I paid has been entirely worth it. I only wish I had found the app sooner.